Saturday, November 20, 2010

vision or nightmare

'' the place was an ancient cemetery; so ancient that i trembled at the manifold signs of immemorial years. it was in a deep, damp hollow, overgrown with rank grass, moss, and curious creeping weeds, and filled with a vague stench which my idle fancy associated with rotting stone. on every hand were the signs of neglect and decrepitude, over the valley's rim a wan, waning crescent moon peered through the noisome vapours that seemed to emanate from unheard of catacombs, ...

'' i could distinguish a repellant array of antique slabs, urns, cenotaphs, and mausolean facades; all crumbling, moss grown, and moisture-stained, and partly concealed by the gross luxuriance of the unhealthy vegetation ... dripping with some detestable ichor of the inner earth and bordered by moist walls encrusted with nitre ...

'' in the lone silence of that hoary and deserted city of the dead, my mind conceived the most ghastly phantasies and illusions; and the grotesque shrines and monoliths seemed to assume a hideous personality--a half-sentience. ...

'' amorphous shadows seemed to lurk in the darker recesses of the weed-choked hollow and to flit as in some blasphemous ceremonial procession past the portals of the mouldering tombs in the hilldside; shadows which could not have been cast by that pallid, peering crescent moon ...

'' around me were the tombs and the darkness and the shadows; ... i sat petrified in that unknown cemetery in the hollow, amidst the crumbling stones and the falling tombs, the rank vegetation and miasmal vapours, ... as i watched amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath an accursed waning moon. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the statement of randolph carter.

i: a bike tour through some graveyards.

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